Personal digital assistants, or PDA's, are commonly known hand-held computers that can be used to store various personal information including, but not limited to contact information, calendar information, etc. Such information can be downloaded from other computer systems, or can be inputted by way of a stylus and pressure sensitive screen of the PDA. Examples of PDA's are the Pahm.TM. computer of 3Com Corporation, and Microsoft CE.TM. computers which are each available from a variety of vendors.
Users of PDA's commonly do not rely solely on such units for storing important information. For example, full-size desktop computers are also used to store information during the course of other activities such as receiving and responding to electronic mail. This tends to lead to the generation of separate and discrete sets of information on both the PDA and desktop computer. Of course, maintaining multiple sets of information is undesirable due to obvious organization problems.
To overcome this difficulty, information on a desktop computer is often "synchronized" with information on a PDA. In other words, any new information in the form of additions, deletions, and/or changes that exists on either the desktop computer or the PDA is reflected on both. By frequently synchronizing data between the desktop computer and the PDA, a user is ensured to have one set of completely updated information which leads to increased organization.
One issue that is not fully addressed in prior art PDA's is synchronizing data between PDA's of different users. While the PDA of a first user may properly reflect the contact information of a person, i.e. John Doe, a second user may have John Doe's previous, incorrect contact information, thereby reflecting a lack of synchronization. Moreover, many complications can arise due to conflicting scheduled events and meetings. For example, calendar software of the Palm.TM. PDA only allows a single calendar to be used.
Such lack of organization is primarily caused by the lack of shared information among PDA's of different users. Up to now, focus has been only on promoting organization of a single user by way of synchronization between a PDA, a desktop computer, and a remote server.
There is thus a need for a system and method for synchronizing data between a plurality of different PDA's to promote organization among multiple different users.